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   pettter (pettter@mastodon.acc.umu.se)'s status on Friday, 10-Mar-2023 23:27:21 JST pettter

   in reply to

   • Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her)

   @emilymbender Sometimes I wonder what would've happened if Steedman instead of Chomsky had become the stodgy old white guy whose theories on language and grammar got enormously widespread and influential.

   • Embed this notice
     Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) (emilymbender@dair-community.social)'s status on Friday, 10-Mar-2023 23:27:23 JST Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her)

     in reply to

     What matters about language in the context of this tech is that language and meaning are relational, that communication is a joint activity, and that systems set up to mimic the form of language can provide the illusion that they understand, that they know things, and that they are reasoning.

     So, read this, not that:

     https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/ai-artificial-intelligence-chatbots-emily-m-bender.html

   • Embed this notice
     Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) (emilymbender@dair-community.social)'s status on Friday, 10-Mar-2023 23:27:24 JST Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her)

     in reply to

     The ability to render grammaticality judgments (and based on how much data) really isn't the issue. Corporations aren't out there suggesting that we use #ChatGPT to 'disrupt' the industry of judging grammaticality.

     (And the whole debate about whether or not humans have an innate universal grammar is just completely beside the point here.)

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     Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) (emilymbender@dair-community.social)'s status on Friday, 10-Mar-2023 23:27:25 JST Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her)

     Linguistics as a field has a lot to contribute to better understanding what large language models can and can't do and yet many don't think to turn to linguists (or don't even really know what linguists do) when trying to evaluate claims about this technology.

     So it's real bummer when the world's most famous linguist writes an op-ed in the NYT* and gets it largely wrong.

     https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/08/opinion/noam-chomsky-chatgpt-ai.html

     (*famous for publishing transphobia & bad AI coverage, but widely read)

     #AIhype #linguistics

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